


Boxes

by samchandler1986



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Domestic Violence, F/M, Parental illness/disability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-01 23:37:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12715176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samchandler1986/pseuds/samchandler1986
Summary: New York. Dad. Vietnam. If only the past was so easily boxed up and shut away.





	1. New York

He wakes at dawn, sweat-soaked. The bedsheets are twisted and knotted around his legs and his jaw aches, like he’s been grinding his teeth in his sleep. Dappled light infiltrates the cabin by inches; illuminates the rising motes of dust. He shudders at the sight of them, pushes the memories of that place away.

Outside the light is so bright he winces, sky an eye-watering blue. Breath steams in the cold air before he’s even lit his first cigarette. He smokes two on the porch, shivering in his undershirt. The sky might be clear but the wind is biting, and smells of coming—

“Snow.”

He flinches, deaf to her cat-soft approach. “Yeah,” he agrees. Does she feel it coming on the breeze too? Or did she just pick the word up from the back of his brain? He stubs out his cigarette. “Yeah, I think it’s going to.” A pause as the cogs turn stiffly for him, mind still woolly with sleep. “You hungry?”

“Yes.”

He nods. “I’ll make us some breakfast.”

The sky is darkening by the time hot French toast hits her plate, the first flakes drifting past the window. She watches them pensively.

“You don’t like the snow.” It’s no surprise, given she spent much of last winter living wild in drifts of it.

She shakes her head. “Cold.”

“Yeah, it is.” He takes a bite of his own toast.

“You like it.”

He swallows, buying time to find his answer. “I suppose I do.”

“Why?”

It’s a fair question. Snow these days brings wrecks on lonely roads and downed power lines, frozen drunks and trouble all told. “I guess I have good memories.”

“Good memories?”

“Yeah. Like snowball fights and sledging. Making snowmen and ice-skating.”

“Ice… skating?”

“Uh, you wear these special shoes and it helps you glide along the ice.” He makes a _whoosh_ sort of gesture with his hand, only deepening her frown. “I’ll have to buy you some skates. But I’m pretty sure that Grandad kept the sled.”

She doesn’t understand half of what he’s said, but she picks up on the underlying offer. “We can go outside?”

“Yeah.” It’s a risk, of course, but if the air is full of snow and the kids are all bundled up who’s to know? “I mean, if you’d like to.”

“Yes,” she says. “I would.”  She takes another bite of toast, expression bland as she finishes breakfast. But this time, when her eyes drift back to the window, he sees something like a smile creep onto her face.

* * *

_“Are you going to stand there all night?”_

_“I’m just… not very good at skating.” She was angry at him for making her say it even as she clung to the wall of the rink. “Okay? We can’t all be country boys like you, with a frozen lake to practice on every winter. Just, just give me a minute.”_

_He had grinned at that. Diane only ever called him_ country boy _when he touched a nerve. “Or I could give you a hand?”_

 _“Oh, you’d like_ that _wouldn’t you?” She said it with fire in her eyes, a scowl on her face. That had softened when she’d seen his expression. The lights of the city twinkling behind them were a decent proxy for stars as her fingers curled around his._

_“Yeah,” he’d said. “I would_ _—_

“Skates,” Jane says, in the present.

He coughs, clearing the lump in this throat, shrugging off the ghosts of a decade past. “Yeah, these are ice skates,” he says and passes her one of the shoes to look at. “Might be a bit big for you yet.”

“From New York.”

“Uh-huh.” He casts around the attic for another distraction, not trusting his face. “Here we go.”

“What is it?”

He tugs the toboggan free of its companion clutter. Smaller than he remembers. “It’s a sled, kid. You go fast over the snow downhill. It’s fun.”  

“Fun,” she repeats, her way of making sense of it all. Guileless, she turns her eyes up to his. “With friends?”

He smiles, in spite of himself. “Yeah. We’ll see about that part.”

* * *

Will is watching the snow, coming down heavily now, feathery flakes. The ground is already sugar-dusted.  “Think you might get a snow day tomorrow, kiddo,” says Joyce lightly.

“Yeah, maybe,” he agrees softly. The house is practically sub-tropical –how they’re going to pay the sky-high heating bill is a problem she’ll have to solve in the near future—but Will still pulls the sleeves of his jumper over his hands.

“You cold?”

“A little.” Spots of colour burn in his cheeks, proving him a liar, but she thinks she understands. She bites her lip, trying to think how best to—

Will’s radio crackles, and they both flinch. “Hey, it’s Lucas. Anybody copy? I have to take Erica out on her sled if this snow stays. Over.”

“I copy,” answers the radio, in Dustin’s voice. “Lonely Mountain at half eleven? Over.”

“What does he mean? What’s—what’s the Lonely Mountain?”

“The big hill up by Mr Pickerford’s farm,” says Will.

“Oh, right.” It had a different name, once upon a time. “What do you think? Do you wanna go join them?”

Will hesitates, clearly torn. He watches the snow fall for a moment and makes up his mind. “No,” he says, apologetic, “I think I’d rather just stay in today…”

“That’s okay honey,” she says, too quickly, touching a hand to his shoulder. He radiates warmth through his woolly layers. “We can play a board game, maybe?”

“Yeah,” he says, smiling at her. Pretending like it’s fun, to be turning into a shut-in here with his neurotic mother—

“Hello?” quavers the radio. “Hello?”  

“El?”

“You need to end the transmission with over. Over,” reminds Dustin.

“Over?”

“Oh, jeez—”

“You want to come out with us?” asks Lucas.

“Yes,” she replies. “Over.”

Will grabs the radio from the table. “Count me in too,” he says.

* * *

“Be back by four, okay?”

“Okay.”

She gives him a big hug, like she used to when he was small. “Go on then. Have fun.”

“I will do.”

She watches him down the road, dragging his sled behind him. Tries to choke down the weighted worry that settles in her throat the moment he is out of her sight. Presses her fist to her mouth, but it’s no good, no good—

The rumble of Hopper’s Blazer, rattling down the trail, gives the madness pause. She’s opening the door before he’s even crunched to a halt, cruel wind knifing through her thin shirt. “Hop?”

“Hey,” he says, touching a hand to her hunched shoulder and ushering her back over the threshold. “Are you okay? Why are you dressed like—?” The warmth of the house answers the question for him. “Jesus. Why is it so warm in here?”

“Will doesn’t like the cold.”

He nods, like he understands. “I left him with Jane at the end of the road.”

“Jane.” It’s a nice name, but it still sits oddly, to her ears. “The boys are still calling her—”

“El. I know. I’m calling her Jane.”

“Right,” she says, and there’s something in the stubborn set of his jaw that makes her park that particular issue. “Why-why are you _here_?”

“I thought you might want a ride to Pickerford Hill.”

She smiles. “The Lonely Mountain,” she says.

“That’s what they’re calling it these days?” He shakes his head.  “What do you think? You can hide with me in plain sight.”

She nods. At some point, she knows, she’ll have to let go. But that time isn’t now. And when all’s said and done, she tells herself, there have always been worse ways to kill time than in the passenger seat of Hopper’s truck.


	2. Dad

There is a car in the ditch about a mile from the hill. “Oh shit,” she says, reaching for her seatbelt. “Are they okay? Should we—?”

“Looks low impact,” Hopper says. Calmer than she is, though she’s not sure if its borne of experience or just numbness. “Hopefully they’ll be fine.” He reaches for the radio. “Callahan, I’ve got a car in a ditch off Kelly Road.”

The radio spits back what sounds like incomprehensible static to her ears, but Hopper acknowledges the station and steps out of the truck. She’s not sure if she should follow, but it feels worse to stay in the passenger seat somehow.  

The driver is hardly more than a kid, slumped behind the wheel with a bloody nose. Hopper pulls open the door. “You okay?” he says.

“Uh, yeah, I uh—” slurs the kid, nervously wiping their nose. Joyce can smell the liquor from several paces back, and Hopper heaves a weary sigh.

“Can you get out for me please?” he says, with clipped patience. More softly to Joyce: “I’m going to have to winch the car out, and probably take this idiot to the hospital.”

“It’s okay,” she says, “I can-I can walk from here.”

“You sure?”

She grinds her teeth together to stop them chattering. “Yeah, I’m sure.” Bright as she can manage.

He gives her a long look. “Stay there,” he growls to the driver, now attempting to nonchalantly lean against the off-road motor. He retrieves an enormous blue jacket from the back seat of his truck.

“No, Hop, seriously – I’m fine—I’m fine—” But the warmth is welcome when it comes down to it, her coat just too thin for this arctic blast. She stutters into silence as pride loses out to pragmatism.  “Thanks.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He waves away the appreciation, understanding. “I’ll be about an hour.”

“I’ll see ya,” she says, with a soft smile, before wading on up the road through the drifting snow.

* * *

There is less snow under the trees. His boots crunch on frozen leaves left over from the fall in places. The path he takes is half-remembered, half-overgrown. Packed earth — perhaps it’s no more than a game trail and not the real route to the ridge of the hill anymore. Doesn’t matter, he’s heading upwards. That’s the main thing.

The shouts and whoops of the children on their sleds carries through the trees. He is struck, suddenly, by the vivid memory of running between the tree trunks. Fleeing snowballs with shards of ice in them, thrown so hard they could draw blood. There was a hollow, he remembers, just off the brow of the hill. Dropping low gave you a view over the snowfield while remaining invisible. He wonders if it still exists.

It does – though he is now far too tall to sit in it and remain unseen. Joyce, on the other hand, is still tiny enough to use the hide. The sleeves of his coat fall past her hands as she stands, smiling. “Hey, Hop.”

“Hey.” She joins him in the treeline, out of sight of the kids. Wordless the ritual now between them in moments like this. The carton from his top pocket, tapping out the first cigarette of the afternoon. He takes a drag and passes over to her for the second.   

“They having fun?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“Mm. There’s more snow coming. Heavy.”

“You going to tell them to clear off?”

“For all the good it will do.” he shrugs. They both remember ignoring the dire warnings of the late Chief Mears, and of living to tell the tale.

She passes the cigarette back. “Was the kid okay? The drunk driver?”

“Oh, yeah. More worried about his dad’s car than his concussion.”

“Figures.”

And if they’re both thinking of another winter, another car in a ditch after a silly competition between two elderly Oldsmobiles, well, neither of them needs to say it.

* * *

_Everything hurt, in spite of all the painkillers, but his arm hurt most of all. The sick kind of pain, deep in the pit of his stomach. His mother’s screaming was secondary to the pressing urgency of the recently set broken bone._

_“How_ could _you Jimmy? Really, how could you do something so stupid?!”_

_It was pretty easy, he wanted to say. There had been a big crowd down at the Hideout parking lot, and he’d been having a decent enough time on the fringes of the court of King John, splitting a six-pack with Bobby Henderson. At least until Lonnie and Joyce had shown up._

_He wasn’t jealous, he’d told himself as he watched them across the lot. Talking quietly, laughing and smiling softly. Definitely not jealous; even if it used to be him with his arm casually slung over Horowitz’s skinny shoulder, sharing his cigarettes. That they’d be going steady by Winter Prom had seemed an inevitability to everyone._

_Everyone except them, it seemed._

_He’d never quite found the right time to ease them out of their comfortable back and forth; always lost his nerve at the crucial moment, thumping heart in mouth. Until all the… business with Chrissy had started to seem like a good idea. And by the time he’d figured out Chrissy was dull as brick, Joyce had made her own move._

_So, there they were, on opposite sides of the parking lot not quite daring to look at one another. And Johnny Harrington had laid out the bet – twenty bucks!_ _— for the fastest down Randolph’s Road and back. And he knew the little cut through by the old diner, from all those times dropping off Horowitz. It was going to be_ so _easy_ _—_

_Except, of course, now Lonnie knew about it too. And he’d shrugged off Horowitz’s placating hand and put his hat into the ring_ _— and there and then Hopper had lost. It was a straight numbers game, and there was no way the old man’s Series 70 was going to square up against Byers’ Rocket and win._

_But there was Joyce, watching him with dark eyes: mouth a thin line after everyone stopped listening to her perfectly sensible objections that this was stupid, even for twenty bucks. Daring him to do something - but_ what _he couldn’t quite tell. So he’d taken the only route he could see - revved up his engine as best he could against the roar of the Rocket’s V8, only to see her turn away in unconcealed disgust._

_It had been pretty fucking easy after that, pushing the car far beyond what he knew was sensible, right up until the patch of ice on Grant’s Corner that saw him roll right into the ditch._

_“Honestly, I never thought you were the type to put me through this, Jimmy. Really, I didn’t, and_ _—”_

_“Aaah-aaah,” cut in his Dad, one of his low guttural noises that meant he was cross about something. His slippered foot thumped once on the carpet. “Aaah.”_

_“Yes, honey, I know,” replied his mother, crossing to the hunched creature in the chair that_ _—once upon a time_ _—had been a husband and father. Without thinking her hand dipped into apron pocket, retrieving a handkerchief to wipe the thread of drool escaping from his hanging mouth. “Had us both worried_ sick _with this nonsense_ _—”_

_“I’m going to bed.”_

_“You’ll do no such thing_ _—”_

_He’d stood at that, more than foot taller than his mother these days. “I’m going to bed,” he said again. Flat calm, in spite of the thunderclouds in his aching head, but the movement was enough. Before a bursting blood vessel had put Frank Hopper permanently into his favourite armchair she’d known his fists – and everyone said what a chip off the old block Jimmy was turning out to be._

_He felt sick, sicker than before at the thought of that, and tried to make amends. “Look, I’m sorry_ _—”_

_“Aaaah-ah!”_

_She turned back to fuss over what was left of Frank, and Jim gave up and went to bed._


	3. Vietnam

It’s a bad dream time again. They come more often since he flushed away all those little capsules, red and blue.

It’s not the noise that wakes her; he doesn’t scream or cry. There’s just something about the memories he’s re-treading, over and over, that bleeds out into the dark until she can almost see what he sees. Feel her own heart thump and pound with borrowed terror. 

She pushes open the door. He is twitching, in his nest of blankets. Feet overhanging the edge of the bench he has set up for himself as bed, in the corner of the living room. She takes a hesitant step or two. Wanting to wake him from the prison of his nightmares, scared to draw nearer and do it.

Of course, for her there’s always another option. She stretches out her hand. Something else unfurling from within to cross the space between them—

— _rotorblade thumps and bullet ricochets, the hot-metal smell of the Huey under fire. And something else metallic. His hands are slick with more than just the mingled sweat of fear and humidity._

_“I’ve got you,” he says, “just hold on. Everything’s going to be okay.” That old lie. The one he’s grown so tired of telling_ _—_

With a gasp she finds herself back in her own skin, drenched in cold sweat and shaking. _Vietnam_ , she thinks. That’s the name for this bad dream time. She’s not sure exactly what it means – other than these shaking, sweating nightmares. They’re almost the worst kind. Almost.

— _the other sort are quieter, colder. They’re not the blood-thump of fear and life desperately clung to, but the black despair of yawning emptiness. Like the void she crosses when she goes to find people, if it was capable of spreading, of growing inside a heart. Those nightmares, she knows, are called_ Sara—

“Wake up,” she whispers. He can’t hear, fighting a battle long ago lost, somewhere in his head. She knows what Mike would say – that maybe if he fights it enough times he might win. But it’s not that. A part of him is still living there, will always live there. Folded deep down inside of him. Like an old wound bound in scar tissue.

— _a terrible wound. Festering_ —

“Wake up,” she says, louder this time. Still not enough. She waves her hand, like the wizard Mike thinks she is, and an empty can on the table goes clattering.

There is a terrifying second where he doesn’t know who or where he is. Animal instinct in the driving seat as he starts awake, fists balled and chin lowered. He blinks, sees her standing in the doorframe, and is himself again.

She doesn’t have the words to explain it, but there’s something profoundly comforting about that moment for a girl who thinks herself a monster. If he can come back, every time, then so can she. 

“Jane?” he says, voice shaking only slightly. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

He wipes his sweating forehead. “Did I wake you?”

“Yes.”

He swears softly, under his breath. “I’m sorry. It was just a bad dream—”

“I know.” And she takes a risk, fearing his wrath, but needing him to know that she knows. “Vietnam.”

He stiffens, forehead creasing, but he doesn’t start shouting. “Yeah,” he says instead. “How’d you know?”

“Boxes,” she replies, looking down at the cellar door.

“It’s okay,” he says, and she knows he really means it. “They’re just bad dreams. That’s all.”

“I know.” She crosses to him, holding out her arm where the interwoven bands of blue now sit. “You said they keep the bad dreams away,” she says, running her finger over the knotted elastic. “Do you need them again?”

“No, kid,” he says, voice cracking only slightly. He folds her fingers over her wrist, giving them a gentle squeeze. “I said you can keep them. I don’t mind a few bad dreams.”

* * *

“Hey, Hop,” she says, “you made it.” The snow is falling thick and fast again; she genuinely had her worries.

Jane jumps down from the passenger side of the Blazer. “Thank you for inviting me Mrs. Byres,” she says, solemn as ever.

“You’re… well, you’re welcome,” Joyce manages, wrong-footed by the almost old-fashioned good manners.

Jane hands over a warm tray, covered with a worn but clean tea-towel. She could be passing over state secrets, her face is so grave. Joyce risks a glance at Hop, but he merely grins and raises his eyebrows. She pulls back the teatowel to discover—

“Christmas cookies!” enthuses Dustin, as the boys and Max crowd in the doorway behind her to welcome the late arrivals.

“After dinner,” she says, over the cacophony of their greetings, holding them aloft to keep greedy hands away. “ _After_ dinner.”

The sofas are pulled up close to the old television, partly disassembled so the gang can sit on the floor altogether. Hop is watching them as they settle themselves down, watching Jane and Mike together. Joyce catches his sleeve and pulls him into the kitchen.

“What?”

“Let her have a moment,” she whispers.

“Like Hell!” he hisses back. “She doesn’t know the first thing about—”

“And how else is she gonna learn? You want her to go to school, do all those normal things that she deserves? Are you gonna be there then? No. You can’t be. You _shouldn’t_ be. Mike is—he’s a good kid, Hop. He’s good to my Will. Kind.”

There’s doubt, still, in the surly set of his jaw. But he stops looking over her shoulder, blue eyes finding brown. Her hands are still tugging on his shirt sleeves, imploring him to listen. “Okay,” he says, fingers curling around her elbows. “I’m sorry. You’re right. You’re right—”

“Mom? Can I… can I come in?” Will at the door, wrong-footed. She can’t understand why, until Hopper lets go of her like she’s red-hot, and she realises just how close they were standing.

“Of course, sweetie,” she says, as Hop busies himself with something on the kitchen side. It’s his business if he feels awkward. They’ve been friends far too long, and suffered through far too much these last few years, for his touch to feel anything other than welcome comfort.

Will refills his empty popcorn bowl and trots back out to the Christmas movie screening. They finish making the dinner in companionable silence; he peels the potatoes as she dices carrots.

“We make a pretty good team,” she says, as she shuts the oven door, dusting off her hands.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “We do.” He takes one of her hands in his larger one, squeezing her fingers. She smiles back. They look out for each other. They always have. And anything else that hangs in the air between them; feelings unspoken that twist in her chest or sit stubbornly behind his teeth?

Well, they can stay where they always have too. Boxed up.


End file.
